A Passion for Change

Watch the below 12 minute documentary on Except and its partners to get a feeling for us and our work.

How do we work?

Our mission of “creating the foundation of a sustainable future” extends to the way we work as people. This way of working is not for everyone, it's good to realize the following when considering approaching us:

We work hard and we operate at the forefront of pioneering solutions. Stamina, flexibility, creativity, professionality, and forward thinking are a must.

We give freedom and flexibility in work hours and space, and expect responsibility in return.

While we enable for you to work anywhere, anytime, we value our time working together. Each Monday, we have a shared lunch, every other Monday we all meet up, and teams work together on a daily basis in our main office in Utrecht.

We give space for self expression and development, to learn new skills, and grow within the organization, and expect you to give a cutting edge performance in return.

We operate within a flat hierarchy. You can initiate and contribute to any project, and have the responsibility to follow through. If you need a lot of guidance, or support in organizing yourself, we may not be for you.

We travel internationally, a lot. Have your passport ready.

We speak English at the office.

We maintain a 4 day work week.

We provide only public transportation and bicycle allowances for commuting.

Interns and trainees

We are open for a limited number of internships and trainee positions each year. These are not your easy run-of-the-mill internships, and are at minimum 6 months. You'll be pushed to your limits and receive a lot of freedom and responsibility. We want you to stay if it works well, which is the goal of the traineeship program. If that's what you want, read on. For trainees, answer the seperate set of questions at the end in your application.

Our work ethic

Every day more people decide to start working on a sustainable future. When Except started in the late 90s, interest in sustainability was just starting to percolate; now thousands of individuals around the world are contributing to the momentum.

At the same time, many realize that just having good intentions and saying you’re 'green’ isn’t good enough. Figuring out what the 'right' thing is, requires hard work, thorough research, and a good serving of creativity. Our daily job is to find solutions for problems more complicated than anything humanity has faced before.

Working at Except means loving working with data and numbers and figuring out paths through what at first may seem impossible situations. You love subjects as disparate as finance, design, and chemistry, and love working both collaboratively and independently.

The Except community is made up of people who thrive on this kind of work. We are specialist generalists and generalist specialists. We’re critical, love challenges, work late hours (by choice!) and push the frontier with every project.

Working together

We are a group of hard working, passionate and commited individuals with a strong vision and the capacity to realize it. We take responsibilities for our own actions. Except is our glue, the streamline of our work, guaranteeing quality and providing tools, knowledge and the support we need to do big projects as well as small ones. Except also provides us with the central sustainability methodology we all use and help build, called Symbiosis in Development.

Most of us have been interested or involved in sustainability for the majority of our lives, and we live, breathe and love the complexities it brings, and the opportunities it lays bare.

Are we accepting new team members?

Except prides itself on being innovative, agile and efficient. In order to stay that way we restrict the size of our organization, and reserve the introduction of new professionals to exceptional individuals. You may apply, but you're going to have to show us why you think you can contribute. Read below for some guidelines.

We need you to have read the entirety of this page in order to apply, and follow its instructions carefully. (This also tells us you're willing to read long, boring documents :) ). You need to fit the following criteria for you to be able to join Except. In your application, make sure to directly touch upon these points, and explain how you connect with them:

What disciplines do you master? How and why do you excel?

Do you have the time and energy to invest learning the necessary tools, processes, standards, and methods, and making yourself fit alongside us?

Are you joining us to stay, work full time with us, grow together with us, and make Except your own for the long term? We forge long-term, trusting relationships. Are you ready to form this alliance?

Do you communicate fluently in English, both written and spoken? What role in a team setting do you prefer?

What is your passion, where do you want your life to go, and how could you personally use Except to achieve your dreams?

Are you applying as an intern or trainee for a minimum of 6 months at our main office in Utrecht? If you are applying for such a position, make sure to show the quality of your work, and the way you want to establish yourself as an entrepreneur within our co-operative.

Additional questions for trainee applications:

We have a fixed, small trainee compensation per month. How will you support yourself in the 6 months+ as a trainee?

Which aspects of your skillset do you want to develop further as a trainee?

Trainees work at the office. Do you live in the Netherlands, and if not, how do you see this happening for yourself?

Do you hope to gain a working position with us after your traineeship? What kind of role do you see for yourself?

How to Apply

To apply, send an email to work@except.nl, with the subject line 'Exceptional member application'. Any applications sent to other mail addresses or with missing information from the list below will be filtered out. Be sure to include:

Introductory/motivation letter that describes how and why you would like to work with Except.

A clear description of how you fit the points described above (max 1 page)

Your CV, detailing your work as an independent

A portfolio (if applicable)

The process takes time and patience from both your and our end. We receive many applications, we accept only a few, but there's always room for that special someone. What is important to us is the process of application. Please make sure to follow the process carefully and exactly, this will help speed up the process.